And then--what would have been the use, anyhow--and where was the necessity?
But this thing, familiar and mysterious at the same time, occupied his imagination.

The solitude of the sea intensifies the thoughts and the facts of one's experience which seems to lie at the very centre of the world, as the ship which carries one always remains the centre figure of the round horizon.

He viewed the apoplectic, goggle-eyed mate and the saturnine, heavy-eyed steward as the victims of a peculiar and secret form of lunacy which poisoned their lives.

But he did not give them his sympathy on that account.

No.